ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) will learn how to read poems that are supposedly "difficult." We encounter and discuss the poems one at a time. It's much easier than it seems! Join us and try it!
Yes, the next live, interactive 10-week session of ModPo will begin on September 8, 2018, and will conclude on November 19, 2018. Al Filreis will be in touch with you by email before the September 8 start of the course with all the information you'll need to participate. If you have questions, you can email the ModPo team at modpo@writing.upenn.edu.
During the 10 weeks of the course, you will be guided through poems, video discussions of each poem, and community discussions of each poem. And (unique among open online courses) we offer weekly, interactive live webcasts. Our famed TAs also offer office hours throughout the week. We help arrange meet-ups and in-site study groups.
If you are curious about the ModPo team, type "ModPo YouTube introduction" into Google or your favorite search engine, and watch the 20-minute introductory video. You will get an overview of the course and will meet the brilliant TAs, who will be encountering the poems with you all the way to the end.
If you use Facebook, join the always-thriving ModPo group: from inside Facebook, search for "Modern & Contemporary American Poetry" and then request to be added as a member. If you have any questions about ModPo, you can post a question to the FB group and you'll receive an almost instant reply.
We tweet all year long at @ModPoPenn and you can also find ModPo colleagues using the hashtag #ModPoLive.
ModPo is hosted by—and is housed at—the Kelly Writers House at 3805 Locust Walk on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia USA. All ModPo'ers are welcome to visit the Writers House when they are in our area. Our discussions are filmed there. Our live webcasts take place in the famed "Arts Cafe" of the House. To find out what's going on at the Writers House any time, just dial 215-746-POEM.

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chapter 8 (week 7)—the New York School

<p><b>Week 7 starts at 9 AM (Philadelphia time) on Sunday, October 21, 2018 and ends at 9 AM on Sunday, October 28, 2018.</b> For those doing ModPo on their own or in small groups, the week 7 materials are open and available all year.</p><p>Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, and Kenneth Koch represent the New York School of poets in this week of our course. We met Anne Waldman briefly in chapter 7 — from the “second generation” New York School. Now we add two others of that second generation: Ted Berrigan and Bernadette Mayer. Our super-close readings of Guest's “20” and Ashbery's “Some Trees” are intended, in part, to show that the non-narrative or anti-narrative styles of this group — and their propensity for sudden shifts in pronoun use, inconsistent imagery, and inside-the-community name dropping — nonetheless produce writing that can be interpreted line by line. During this week (a bare-minimum introduction to this playful postmodernity), we will get a bit of pastiche from Koch and several instances of O'Hara's I-do-this-I-do-that explorations of lunchtime, as well as examples of Ashbery's opaque lyricism, Guest's stunning memory-as-word associationalism, Berrigan’s anti-narrative as daily social resistance, and Mayer’s application of O’Hara’s exuberant attention to daily details to a woman’s life and language. Patrick Rosal's contemporary poem begins with an ensemble-voiced, present-tense, frenetic romp through New York City, very much influenced by O’Hara’s mode and sensibility. But then Rosal’s poem moves elsewhere, enacting diasporic return, and pushes the New York School style beyond its earlier categories by developing its own powerful synthesis of global concerns. </p><p><b>ASSIGNMENTS</b>: During this week there are two quizzes due (see below). There is also a writing assignment due. Writing assignment #3 can be submitted anytime between 9 AM on 10/22/18 and 9 AM on 10/28/18; after that, peer reviews will be submitted anytime between 9 AM on 10/29/18 and 9 AM on 11/4/18. There is also a live webcast on Wednesday, October 24, at 8 PM (Philadelphia time).